


The Seventh Circle

by sevendials



Category: Weiss Kreuz
Genre: Blood, Dark, M/M, Religious Themes & References, Sexual Violence, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-13
Updated: 2006-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:42:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendials/pseuds/sevendials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Farfarello believes salvation has to be earned. Ken believes he's too lost to be saved. When Farfarello offers him a chance at redemption, Ken knows it'll take more than the mercy of God if he's going to survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seventh Circle

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz, its characters, properties, indices and sundry related whatchamacallits is not mine for which, given the existence of fanfiction like this, the world may be truly grateful. The characters depicted herein usually fall, in fact, to the somewhat more tender auspices of Takehito Koyasu, Kyoko Tsuchiya, Project Weiss and Movic, and any other companies I may have inadvertently forgot. Even should I be of a mind to try and make money from this twisted little tale, which I’m not, nobody in their right mind would pay me to write this stuff.
> 
> Author’s Notes: It’s porn. _Extremely twisted_ porn. It also took a long time, required a surprising amount of research considering it’s supposed to be a PWP and exists primarily to support my theory that Farfarello x Ken is a sick, sadistic mindfuck of a pairing and not cute at all. If you read Farfarello x Ken fics because you think they really connect on a base level and are, like, soulmates and stuff or have decided Farfarello isn’t a psychotic sociopath really, he’s just misunderstood and really needs a hug, you probably shouldn’t read this. In fact, if you consider yourself in any way, shape or form a nice person you probably shouldn’t read this. Thanks to Dante for the title, Kay for a judicious dose of enthusiasm at a key point in the proceedings and Trucizna (muse, beta reader, twisted twin star?) for her help and support throughout. Bad things happen when we get together. Like this fanfic.
> 
> Warnings: This fic includes **dark adult content** and is suitable for mature readers only. Contains heavy angst, bad language, violence, male-on-male rape, torture, sacrilege, misuse of Christian iconography and Farfarello in all he implies. If you are under eighteen, of a sensitive disposition or do not wish to be exposed to any of the above still less all of them, DO NOT read on.

It was well past midnight by the time they found him.

They stood in darkness, for they always stood in darkness; they stood alone. Past midnight on a crisp, perfectly clear autumn night, one of those nights when the sky, broad and deep and limitless, stretched on forever and the waxing moon sailed proud and high, casting the shadows in silver. There should have been stars. All about them the city lay dormant, dark and still or close enough to both for the difference not to matter: cities do not choose to deal in absolutes. It bided its time. It could wait. One day, Omi sometimes thought, the city would stop…

Youji stood too close. Close enough Omi fancied he could feel the heat bleeding off him, sense his tension. Youji, a predator waiting only for the order to strike, held himself tense as a coiled spring. His head up, eyes slightly narrowed, he fidgeted with the release that held the wire in his watch, a gesture that spoke all too plainly of a dangerous impatience – he would not let down another partner. Omi knew he should be trying to talk the man down, that haste wouldn’t help any of them, but he said nothing. He understood Youji’s urgency all too plainly.

He knew what Youji was waiting for. He nodded. Let’s go.

Youji started forward, pulled at the heavy wooden double doors ahead of them. That they opened at all was a confirmation in itself. Beyond them lay darkness.

It was like stepping into a cavern. Stepping out of this plane and into a delirious nightmare. The shadows, thick and close, heavy as velvet and tainted with the smell of dust and polish, pollen and old paper, and the specter of spent incense, closed about them like a shroud. The air was charged with echoes. To so much as whisper seemed somehow out of place; to shout, profane. A strange place, this, both sanctified and subtly sinister.

They were not alone. Somewhere in this still, dark place, Omi could sense the weight of another’s waiting presence.

At first, their eyes unaccustomed to the sudden gloom, they could see nothing. Just, scattered seemingly haphazard about the heavy dark, a few spots of iridescent light, like the shifting patterns on the retina when the eye is closed. Candles, Omi realized after a confused moment, their flames dancing in the draught from the open doors and casting the interior in shifting pools of shadow and inadequate light: nothing unusual in a place like this but, like the unlocked processional doors, the pattern was wrong. Should there have been so many of them?

Silence shattered as Youji cried out, harsh and wordless and horrified. Omi knew it for a cry of shock, not of fear, but either way it spelt danger. Instinct took over as the teenager moved, all sudden, deadly grace, a dart poised between two fingers as he snapped to attention, calling his teammate’s name—

And froze, his eyes going wide, breath catching in his throat. The dart slipped from his hand.

“Oh, Jesus,” Youji whispered against the worn leather of his glove after a time they never counted had slipped by entirely unheeded. “Jesus _Christ_ , Omi… how are we going to get him _down_?”  
____

Once, on an evening not so long ago which felt it had never happened at all ( _once upon a time_ —) he had, leaving the store and the others, it had been just the two of them then, slipped into the church nearby, funny that there was one – it must, he thought, have been late summer – and simply _sat_. Sat for he didn’t know how long, watching the sun slanting across the floor, dust motes dancing in dying shafts of golden light, thinking. Not very hard.

And nobody else had come; nothing happened.

And then he’d forgotten he’d done it. Ken had no idea why he was remembering it now. It wasn’t, after all, as if it had mattered.

It played: that, Ken thought, marked the difference between them. It wasn’t a positive thing, a matter of better or worse; it was just a difference, a dividing line. It was something he could point to that split them off from one another, perhaps the only thing and to Hell with all that White Hunter bullshit – murderers are murderers are murderers. Where Ken simply did a job, a difficult and dangerous job he could find no joy in and prayed he never would, taking no pride in his work aside from his ability to do it well, bring it to a successful conclusion, this creature played. Games with its targets, games with Death itself and it was only those the Farfarello took seriously, as all the best games-players do.

Maybe that was what it had liked about him: his capacity to play the game for real. It must, Ken knew, have liked something or he wouldn’t have been here, caught behind that dividing line. If he could have only understood, if he knew _why_ he was here, perhaps he’d be able to find a way out. That he lived at all suggested this creature had a weakness. It had a motive for the games it played, and if he only knew what that was then maybe—

Ken didn’t want to understand it. He didn’t want to bargain, to cut a deal: Weiss didn’t. He just wanted out.

(Our positions may have been compromised, Omi had said: just that, plain and simple. Abort.)

Abort. I’m _trying_ to, Omi. Ken didn’t move, he simply let his gaze wander. Let it slip to the closed door. Already he could hardly recall the circumstances that had led him here: he merely remembered that it had been a day for failure. He shivered; he missed his jacket, worn and heavy and familiar. He wondered what had happened to it, if he’d ever see it again, and wondered why it should matter to him so much. He’d wanted Omi to have it, if Omi wanted it, if anything happened… His hands felt different without the bugnuks, he felt different. Underdressed. Unprepared – he would go no further.

The Farfarello came first, of course. It was between Ken and the door, and it was watching him. Quiet as a ghost and placid as moonlight, it stood dormant. It worked to its own timescale, it was patient, it could wait. The Farfarello was fast but Ken thought, he hoped, that he might just be faster. He had to try; he had nothing to lose. Fuck this up and he was dead, but he was probably due to die already – the thought felt flat and anticlimactic, emphatically infuriating. Jesus, what a ridiculous goddamn situation and why did things like this never happen to the others? Behind the line was a dangerous place to be.

If he fucked this up he would, he supposed, at least die quickly. Better to die quickly than die like a toy.

—and moved.

What else could he do? What did he have to offer but surprise? Ken turned and ran for the door, moving quick and purposeful down one of the side aisles and the Farfarello moved with him, flowing into life graceful as a wolf, a hawk, darting almost soundlessly to cut him off. The sai was a single claw suddenly exposed. Ken darted back, ducking clear of its grasp, its darting blade, as the creature sprung toward him with a birdlike shriek. Its cry was terrible, scarcely human, and it chilled Ken's blood – holy shit what _is_ this thing? It was fast. He knew he could hold it off, if he tried, but knew he could do no more than that. He doubted that would be enough.

Ken tried to strike anyway, lashing out blindly at the body before him. Caught it a glancing blow to the jaw, followed it up with a sharp kick to the diaphragm and it gasped as the air was forced from its body but it did not fold, it did not fall. He started, leapt away as the Farfarello’s sai described an arc in the air, hissing a curse as the blade scraped along his naked forearm and laid open the skin; the Farfarello was grinning, exposing a mouthful of too-sharp teeth in a twisted parody of a smile. It hadn’t even felt it.

It was he who woke the creature. Now Ken, one bare hand to his bloodied arm, realized he couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t keep it back. He could only kill it and he couldn’t. Skilled though he was he, he realized (and the thought felt like shame), simply didn’t have the skill. Unarmed, he was little more than utterly helpless.

But what else could he do?

He sprang at it again, catching it about the midsection; momentum knocked the two of them from their feet, sending them tumbling to the floor. For a single moment Ken had the creature pinned, the underside of his bleeding arm forced against its neck; it simply smiled at him again and thrust him off with a knee to the gut, sending him sprawling backward. The boy cried out in sudden pain as he caught the back of his head hard against the base of one of the columns that flanked the aisle. It left him dazed, struggling to blink away the shadows that closed in on his vision, to push himself back upright, gripping the side of a pew as he tried to force himself back to his feet. You can’t, Ken. You _can’t_ just let yourself… get up, you idiot, move!

And his world swam, it skewed: Ken slipped under. It felt like he was drowning. The floor, polished stone, felt cold against his back, cold as ice; he couldn’t get any purchase on it. The air was thick as velvet with the ghost of incense and dust and old paper, and candles, too many candles, scattering the shadows. Air you could choke on. It smelt of childhood; Natsuki and a box of beetles, Sister Helena’s scoldings, _Sancta Maria_ …

And it came. Oh, God – he’d lost and he knew it, but he’d lost long ago.

The Farfarello crouched over him, scarred and moon-pale and smiling, still, that joke of a smile. Instinctively, Ken backed away, trapped against the column rearing up behind him. He winced as the point of its sai darted beneath his chin, grazing paradoxically gently against his skin, a wordless demand that he raise his head. His own gaze furious (but not enough, God dammit! Not enough!), Ken forced himself to meet its single eye. It was the eye of a maniac, someone unreachable, trapped somewhere far away in a world of his own creation. Somewhere, perhaps, where all this made sense.

It was only now it knelt before him, close enough for him to feel the heat of its breath against the plane of his cheek, that Ken began to understand. This was only a man, barely older than he was but broken and twisted and mad: the realization frightened him. It terrified him that the creature should be human after all. As a figure in a too-literal nightmare, or the demon whose name he had taken, he had been easier to cope with. Easier to understand.

(Because everyone knew demons didn’t exist, and nightmares he could wake from. If Farfarello was a man, even a twisted parody of one, then this was reality and that…)

It was watching him. He was, Farfarello. Watching and biding his time. He had all the time he needed.

“Poor fly,” he said in an undertone, and his voice sounded to Ken like the purr of a machine, something ill-constructed and under strain. Something which longed only to break. His face was placid, full of distance. Unreachable. “It fights. It doesn’t know that it’s trapped.”  
He knew it was a parable, not even a difficult one. Ken, muscles taut as if waiting to spring and eyes dark with fear and fury, scowled at the Schwarz, his lips slightly parted in a feral snarl: every inch the Siberian, cornered. You’re not human tonight either, Hidaka. “Sometimes they escape,” he snapped, and he couldn’t think why he played along when he knew that he could never win when playing on a madman’s terms, but he could hardly make matters worse…  
Farfarello simply spared Ken another distorted smile, baring crowded, too-white teeth. Ken wondered if perhaps he was conceding the point, or maybe he simply smiled to see his adversary join the dance. “It struggles. It tires. It doesn’t know that to resist at all only tightens the snare, poor fly…”  
“Christ,” Ken said in forceful disgust – and wasn’t there anything round here he could use as a weapon, Goddammit? His hand, bare, bloodied, groped blindly beside him for something sharp, something heavy, anything at all and found only the edge of a worn, sagging kneeler, a slim hymnal with dog-eared paper covers. Both were worse than nothing. The sai scraped against his chin, tracing the line of his jaw. “Spare me the sermon!”  
“You fear Death.”  
“No. I’m already dead,” Ken replied, and knew it for a challenge.  
And he laughed, and his laughter sounded like something shattering; the madman laughed at him in what sounded like genuine amusement. It took Ken aback. “No.” He spoke simply, as if stating a fact, _in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God_ – “Death is easy, kitten.”

And Farfarello reached out for him, as if beckoning him forward. He crouched before Ken with his hand outstretched, a gesture that simply said, come. Wondering, Ken gazed at it in incomprehension, raised his head and stared into Farfarello’s single eye. He felt he could drown in it…

Fall with me.

It was an invitation.

Ken flinched, feeling something inside him give a sick, sudden twist, and realized with a certain cold confidence that he was afraid. He shrank away from that hand, pressing back hard against the column behind him as if hoping he could press himself into it, hide himself away (Mary Mother of God, get me out of here). How the Hell could he ask for _consent_? Surely, _surely_ even a madman must know better than that!

The revulsion in his eyes must have been what did him in. Ken had known this would change nothing, that what he didn’t freely give would simply be snatched from him but it had been nice, just for a second, to pretend he mattered and had a choice. Farfarello moved, snatched for and found his arm and yanked him bodily to his feet. Dazed and off-balance Ken stumbled forward, nearly fell against the man’s chest even as instinct had him resist: trying like a recalcitrant child dragging, in his mother’s wake, his complaining way around the shops, to pry Farfarello’s fingers from his upper arm, to twist free, hissing a curse. Succeeded only in making Farfarello cling the tighter.

Farfarello’s hand was cold, cold as the moonlight, and its too-long, too-sharp nails bit talonlike into the flesh of his arm. His grasp was as firm and tight as a hand in rigor.

“Get _off_ me, you fucking lunatic!”

Ken didn’t want to speak and he hated the way his voice sounded. Hated the way it shook. It wasn’t any kind of demand; it was only a plea. Leave me alone, please God don’t hurt me… he had long believed that death would take him by surprise, that it would burst upon him unannounced and unasked-for, ready or not. He hadn’t been counting on helplessness in the face of it, on seeing the end coming and knowing he could do nothing to save himself. Hadn’t expected death to come creeping, a shadow on the edge of sight which slowly, slowly stole ever closer…

And it was torture. Why should he have to _wait_? Ironic that the hunter should die as prey.

“You’re gonna kill me anyway,” he said with sudden, desperate bravado. “Why the wait?”  
Farfarello hesitated, muscles taut: motion stilled. “Penitence,” he said tranquilly, resting the point of his sai just below Ken's eye, lips twisting into a smile at the way Ken flinched and hissed in sudden pain as he traced, agonizingly slowly, the line of the boy’s cheekbone, “You have sinned. You seek absolution. I can show you the way. Do you think yourself worthy of a merciful death? Salvation needs be earned, child of God.”  
“ _Earned_?” Ken echoed; his voice was little more than an incredulous whisper. A trickle of blood crawled slow and heavy down his cheek. “I’ve gotta _earn_ the right to _die_?”

Farfarello only laughed at him and dragged him forward, along the aisle and up a small, shallow flight of stairs. Ken could do nothing but stumble after him, though he struggled and swore and clawed at Farfarello’s fingers with his free hand, and tried, quite desperately, to pull free – and knew he was doing nothing but tiring himself out, tightening the snare.

Yeah, I get it. Poor little fly.

Ken stumbled again as they reached the top of the stairway, would have fallen if it hadn’t been for the altar rail striking sharp and brutal about his waist; it caught him like a blow to the body. Farfarello barely noticed. He only dragged Ken forward, snatching for the boy’s forearm with his free hand and yanking him bodily over the communion rail, then, his grip growing slack as he abruptly lost interest, stepping back and leaving Ken to fall.

He landed awkwardly, jarring an elbow against the flagstones as instinct had him protecting his head, struggling against the pain that bloomed sharp and sudden in abdomen and thighs where the edge of the rail had caught him: he curled up about it in a vain attempt to ease it, gasping for air. He’d hurt worse than this of course, far worse but what did the knowledge help? Pain was pain. For a fatal few dazed moments he could do nothing but lie there and struggle to catch his breath, marshal suddenly scattered thoughts. Flicker of candle-flame echoed mutedly in the dark and dully shining sweep of the floor: snatching frantically for orientation, Ken raised his head.

The sanctuary: he should have crossed himself. He shouldn’t have been there at all. Quite in spite of himself, Ken shivered. He never would have suspected a creature like Farfarello could betray a taste for the theatrical.

And somewhere – a single chorister, one out of many, singing a semitone flat – a discord, jarring and sinister. Something was wrong here, subtly and irrevocably, but he could do nothing but sense the strangeness. Ken couldn’t explain even to himself precisely what was wrong, he could only know that something was. He blinked, unable quite to hide his confusion. Everything was in its place, right down to the wreaths of fresh white flowers he recognized as wedding garlands, somewhat fussily arranged, and the plain white altar cloth falling in careful folds to the endless floor, but something here was gone.

He supposed he could hardly own it surprising Farfarello would bring him here to end it—

Footsteps. The Schwarz, cadaverous and bone-pale in the deceptive glow of the candles, was stood in quiet contemplation by the altar, the very tips of his slender fingers lightly brushing against the cloth that covered it. He lowered his head slightly (a nod, Ken realized), then snatched for the cloth with both hands and, with a single ferocious tug, laid the smooth, dark marble altartop bare. The elaborate floral centerpiece toppled to the floor in a flurry of petals and landed with a single sickening crack, strewing flowers at Farfarello’s feet.

The clumsy metaphor was lost on Farfarello. He simply turned back to Ken with the heavy cloth grasped loosely in both hands, and his face was the face of a studious child, grave with its own intent. Then, negligently, he ripped it in two, the sudden shriek of rending fabric a horrifying stain on silence. Snatching at the railings beside him, Ken struggled to rise.

The madman was on him in seconds. Confused and frightened, already dazed with pain, Ken didn’t have a prayer.

He yelped more in surprise than fear as Farfarello sprang upon him, forcing him back to his knees. His own body pinning Ken's, Farfarello held the boy against the communion rail, his right arm trapped before him and the plane of his unmarked cheek pressed hard against the bars. The fingers of his free hand curled around one of the railings: only the tautness of his grasp and a single sharp inhalation betrayed how much it must have hurt him.

“Why do you fight, child of God?” Farfarello asked, his voice a playground sing-song. “I can grant you what you search for. All you have to do is yield.” Then, in a low, threatening purr coming harsh and hot and breathy against Ken's cheek, “Don’t even think of moving.” His crowded teeth grazed against the curve of Ken's ear.

Ken swallowed, and said nothing. He had nothing whatsoever to say.

Movement. Farfarello had drawn back – a little, just a little: nowhere near enough. Ken could, at least, raise his head.

He could feel him, Farfarello. Ken could feel his captor’s body where it pressed hard and emphatic against his own; even through the thin fabric of his tee-shirt he could feel the buttons of Farfarello’s coat digging into the flesh of his back. He shifted uneasily, trying to ease the pressure, then froze – don’t think of moving: pathetic really, that he hadn’t needed the threat to be finished. And movement, noise. The snap and rasp of heavy material being shaken out and folded; a single _tsk_ of irritation, a tic which was only eerily human; the soft subsidence of his own breaths, already too fast and too shallow and please, God, let the others be…

If the best he could hope for was rescue, he was already as good as finished. Weiss didn’t do salvage jobs. You either came back or you didn’t and if you didn’t the best you could hope for was a quick death—

But you’ve yet to earn salvation, Ken.

Whisper of fabric on fabric as Farfarello moved again. His arms brushed lightly against Ken's shoulders as he reached round before him; the boy got a brief glimpse of the madman’s hands grasping the length of folded white fabric he had torn from the altar cloth before Farfarello drew the cloth tight over his eyes, tying a firm knot at the side of his head and leaving the ends to trail over his shoulder, brushing against his chest. Sharp-nailed fingers slipped around the edge of the fabric, rearranging this and that so that no light could seep under it, tugging free a few strands of trapped hair, casually catching at his skin. Tightening the knot.

Farfarello had blindfolded him. The very staginess of the gesture sickened Ken even as he felt his heart skip a beat and his breath catch in his throat. Heavy, stifling darkness folded itself about him, a painful pressure building at his temples and about the bridge of his nose. And fear closed in.

“Christ almighty,” Ken heard himself say, and his voice was hoarse and horrified, “what do you want with me?”

His only answer was a single soft sound: a breathy laugh which sounded strangely like sighing. Then a hand pressing hard between his shoulders, forcing his chest back against the bars. The sting of the sai at his nape, scraping agonizingly slowly down the length of his spine, the measured crawl of spilled blood, and sudden cold – Jesus fuck Farfarello was cutting off his shirt.

Two quicker, less deliberate cuts down his arms, bisecting both sleeves and leaving a fine bloody line scored across his shoulders, and Farfarello was stripping the ruined shirt from Ken's body, leaving him exposed and shivering – and God in Heaven circumstances be damned he could feel an all-too-familiar hot prickle in his cheeks as the blood rushed to them. Blushing. _Blushing_ , for fuck’s sake! Ken bit his lip. It seemed sick and stupid that he should react in the same way to having the clothing unceremoniously stripped from him by a man who was planning to kill him as he did to an idiotic tease Youji barely meant and he hadn’t wanted to blush then, either. He wished Youji were here. He wished anyone was. Help me…

It seemed bizarre and weirdly anticlimactic when Farfarello stooped and took his boots off, too.

I want to go home, Ken thought suddenly, and even the thought felt small and hopeless.

Farfarello was there and then nowhere. The weight of him, the warmth of him, slipped back into the shadows and vanished and it wasn’t any kind of comfort. Leather creaked quietly as the man straightened, fabric hissed: trifling sounds an individual usually barely heard, suddenly grown significant in a world turned dark. Leaving Ken (a supplicant; atypically surrendered) kneeling by the communion rail with his head bowed, a twisted take on private prayer. Somewhere above his head he thought he heard Farfarello start to laugh.

Bastard, Ken thought, but said nothing. It wasn’t like talking was doing him any good anyway. Whatever he said he’d just get laughed at, or subjected to another stupid parable…

“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, asshole?”

Rage was familiar, an old friend lost for far too long. It was comfortable, easy to confess to; it was lunacy but somehow it was safety and Ken yielded to it. He scrambled clumsily back to his feet, trying to ignore the uncomfortable chill of the flagstones against his bare feet, steadying himself on the rail behind him as he snatched at the blindfold and desperately tried to tear it away. Fear he could handle but the darkness, heated and oppressive – the darkness, dear God, _that_ —

And it came, catching firmly at his wrists with skeletal, pale fingers and dragging his hands from the knot of the blindfold, effortlessly pulling him into a taut, parodic embrace. The boy cried out in sudden shock, clawing at the bandages that swathed Farfarello’s chest with his free hand, head averted and back arched as he fought to put much-needed space between them and struggle free from the tightening snare of Farfarello’s arms. Fuck, what the Hell was happening, why him, for Christ’s sakes _what did this lunatic want_? Fighting against a sudden swell of panic, biting back a frantic curse, Ken aimed a violent kick at Farfarello’s legs. The man didn’t even wince.

“ _Fuck off_ , you mad _bastard_!” Even to Ken’s own ears he had sounded frantic. Fearful. “I’m gonna fucking _kill_ you—!”  
Farfarello must have smiled. Madonna-calm. “Sin for me, child of God.”

Then it kissed him.

Penetration. Pain. Muscles going tense, Ken froze, gasping soft and sharp against his captor’s lips as he pushed back hard against Farfarello’s chest; he tried to recoil but the madman held him fast. Even the Farfarello’s kiss was vampiric. It bruised, it tore and stole: to be kissed by the creature was an act of defilement. It left Ken agonized and bloodied, ripped apart. It left his mouth tainted with something hot and heavy and coppery, taste of decay and dissolution.

He couldn’t comprehend how such a thing could be possible, but the kiss had split his lips and lacerated his tongue. Drawn blood. He coughed, spat, fought the urge to gag. And he realized – sin for me – Ken realized he understood.

Mary Mother of God, Ken thought, and the thought felt curiously understated, he’s going to rape me.

No. Oh Jesus, no. God, tell me I’ve got it wrong please God, he can’t _do_ that and even as he thought it Ken couldn’t help but wonder why. Farfarello could do anything he wanted: even thinking it hurt. The madman’s grip slackened, his arms fell from him and, unexpectedly freed, Ken stumbled backward (could he get the blindfold off, could he find a weapon, _where could he run_?), brought up short when something smooth and cold caught him in the small of the back. The railing again. He knew where he was now, if he could just… and hands, strong and heavy, snatching roughly at his waist, nails scraping painfully against bare skin and Ken was back in Farfarello’s arms and then a giddy, weightless feeling: he’d picked him up.

Farfarello was carrying him. Ken struggled against him, he fought, blaspheming viciously and clawing at Farfarello’s hair, his face, fingernails tearing into soft, scarred skin but how, when pain and fear made him weak, could he fight someone who didn’t know how to hurt? How could he – shit, Hidaka, you’re an idiot: his fingers had caught on something incongruous, cool and sickeningly smooth against the curve of Farfarello’s cheek. The eyepatch! Fuck yes the _eye_ … it made sense, it was right, even a man like Farfarello had his weaknesses. Perhaps he could—

And it was over and so it began. The surface Farfarello dropped him onto, without ceremony, felt bitterly cold against his bare chest, cold and unyielding. One of his feet dangled dizzily over nothing at all. The altar, then. Ken heard himself yelp in shock, in pain, and tried to pull away, but a hand pressing hard between his shoulderblades slammed him back against the altartop and forced him to lie with his body pressed flat against the marble. Farfarello caught his right wrist, twisting his arm up behind his back and it hurt, Christ it hurt, he wasn’t meant to bend like that!

“You move, kitten,” Farfarello said, breath coming soft against the back of Ken’s neck, “and I’ll break your arm for you.” He could almost have been murmuring to a lover…

He drew back, clearly confident that he had the boy precisely where he wanted him. For a moment Ken had nothing, just the heavy darkness, the biting cold, the dull, cramping pains shooting up his captured arm. Then a single sound, a soft, metallic click and something was scraping slow and painful down the back of one thigh as Farfarello turned his attention to cutting away his jeans. He wanted to fight. He wanted to kill Farfarello, he wanted to run and he could barely even lift his head.

“Please,” Ken said hopelessly, and hated himself for saying it. “Please, for God’s sake… stop.”

He was begging.

(He really is going to rape me. And there’s nothing I can do.)

Ken hissed in pain as the point of the sai snagged against his skin. And all he could do was lie there and wait – how could this be happening? How could there be nothing he could do? He was a killer, for Christ’s sakes! He was good at what he did, better than good, how the Hell could he just _let_ someone still less this man – wait as Farfarello cut off the remainder of his clothing. The Schwarz worked too slowly. It was over far too soon.

He tried once more to shy away as Farfarello put down the sai (dull click of metal striking stone bare inches from his head) and grabbed at his ruined jeans. Though Ken cursed and tried to kick, his ripped pants and underwear were stripped from him only too easily, leaving him lying stark naked on the altartop and shivering uncontrollably, though whether it was the cold that was working on him or his own overwhelming terror he had no idea. Ken felt himself flush furiously in sheer humiliation, biting down on his already torn and bleeding lower lip, and tried to fight against the hot, familiar stinging at the back of his eyelids, a feeling he desperately wished he could deny. Call yourself a man, Ken Hidaka?

At least he’d been blindfolded; at least Farfarello wouldn’t see the shame in his eyes, or his tears…

This was – it was a bad joke, it was insane, it was surreal. He could hardly believe in any of it; it simply wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Things like this happened in different places, to different people, people who weren’t him – _victims_ –

“Why?” Ken said to the altartop; he sounded frantic, furious. “ _Why_ , God damn it?” And though he needed one desperately Ken had hardly expected an answer; he flinched at the sound of Farfarello’s voice.  
“You are His,” the madman stated calmly, as if it should have been quite obvious. “He walks with you. He shan’t see you suffer in solitude. You strayed from the fold. Would you now fear the shepherd?”  
He should have known it would be no reason he could ever have understood. Child of God, huh? It was an effort to fight back the laughter. “And if I don’t want to be saved?” Ken asked with desperate bravado. “Fuck _forgiveness_. Just kill me!”

And Farfarello chuckled soft and breathy, and the truly terrifying thing was that his amusement was only entirely genuine. He truly did find it funny that Ken should protest, plead with him.

But they all pleaded, always. Ken supposed Farfarello had been expecting it. This man would have heard it all too many times before and never listened; why would he have started now? He supposed it was just noise, too familiar to be worthy of attention ( _don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, my children – my wife – my company – I have money, please, who do you think you are you can’t do this!_ ). He supposed his pleas worse than meaningless ( _please, don’t kill me_ ), and he wondered if maybe Farfarello was disappointed in him for being so weak, for reacting so entirely predictably ( _please—_ ). Maybe he’d been hoping for something different from him: perhaps he’d been counting on more from Weiss. Maybe.

“Don’t do this,” Ken said. “Please.”

Farfarello laughed at him and held him down and raped him. Ken lost consciousness.

Yet he’d tried – and how ridiculous an ambition it was! – Ken had tried to be brave. Christ, he’d tried so hard to just endure. He should have known it would be futile, that a man like this wouldn’t allow him even that small defiance. It must have been the sheer glamour of the blasphemy that had appealed to Farfarello, or perhaps theatrics again, sex on an _altar_ , for fuck’s sake… Or, perhaps, the rape was merely another way to tear him down, to make him cringe and bleed and scream, and reaction the whole point of it. He didn’t know, and never would, and somehow it seemed to matter terribly.

The creak of leather and movement sensed not heard; an arm about his waist yanking him onto his knees and the bandages wrapped about it felt rough and uncomfortable against his skin. Soft pop of a button, the rasp of a zip and the whisper of Farfarello’s breath coming hot and tainted against his nape as the man bent over him, abruptly animal. Ken struggled, and tried to twist free, and cursed viciously and creatively, and knew he was proving absolutely nothing. It was impossible, it was surreal, _he couldn’t get away_ …

All he could think of was how stupid this was and why, _why_ did he have to go through this only to be permitted to die? All Ken wanted was for this to be over. If you’re going to do it then for God’s sake _do_ it, it can’t last forever, just don’t make me wait. Please, don’t make me wait.

Always, mother had said comfortably, always be careful what you pray for, Ken.

And then there was only agony, blazing white and scalding.

Penetration and pain. The shriek was ripped from him, extorted by force and he couldn’t stand it, he simply couldn’t survive something that could hurt like this; couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could barely even breathe as Farfarello thrust into him, hard and forceful and brutal – oh, Christ, how it hurt! Tears queued up, stinging hot and insistent at the back of his eyelids and Ken struggled to choke back a sob, thought he heard Farfarello laugh, felt the madman’s teeth scraping roughly against his collarbone and his fingernails rake against the skin of his abdomen; it wasn’t even relevant.

It was a torment to know that he hadn’t even needed to be tied down. Agonized, blinded and perfectly helpless, he could do nothing but lie beneath Farfarello and yield to his own violation: _salva nos_ —

And wanted to cry out and couldn’t catch his breath, he was going to break apart, and felt something inside tearing with a sudden sharp, searing pain and a rush of hot, heavy fluid. Ken heard himself screaming high and thin and hysterical and it wouldn’t stop and he couldn’t get away and couldn’t endure it and.

Farfarello fucked mechanical. Detached and dispassionate, all his movements were fierce and paroxysmal, shuddering and remorselessly repetitive: he moved like over-wound clockwork, an automaton ill-constructed and under strain. Long and bony fingers painfully entwined in Ken's dark hair, he pressed Ken’s cheek hard against the altartop, holding him still. He was murmuring something in a soft, frenzied undertone, the words spilling in snatches over the boy: Latin, a prayer – a _Gloria Patri_. Ken had recognized the shape to it, and he shuddered sinuously beneath him.

(and please God make him stop. I don’t want this, I never wanted this oh God I want my mother and I’m sorry, Jesus Christ I‘m sorry, don’t look at me I’m gonna fucking kill him the rapist bastard and I’ll do better I promise I can change, I’ll do anything just let me live and make this stop, please just make him stop…)

He couldn’t move. Could hardly breathe, nearly choked on nothing but air. He couldn’t see and it was no comfort at all. The darkness was overwhelming, it was stifling him, and pain flared behind his eyelids in searing scarlet and the fingers of his free hand curled around the edge of the altartop and clung so tight he thought something must surely break, and he writhed in Farfarello’s grasp and clawed at the marble he lay upon, and fought frenziedly to break free though it was far too late and couldn’t matter, and tried and failed to catch his breath, and bit down hard on his lower lip until he could once again taste the copper taint of his own blood, in a desperate and totally futile attempt to stifle his wordless, agonized screams.

Ken struggled, and screamed, and in time he wept. It changed nothing.

And in time something said, calm and clinical, that’s enough. Oblivion closed in, and Ken tumbled into it.

 

It seemed ironic that pain should drag him back.

The blow, backhanded, fingers open, cracked sharp and sudden across Ken’s cheek: it snapped his head to one side, made him whimper in wordless protest as reality crept, unwanted, back to him. For a few blessed moments he could recall nothing of where he was, what was happening to him – hang onto it, something murmured slyly, make the most of this feeling because you’re not going to like what you’ve woken to – and he blinked into the blackness before him, or tried to, and wondered dazedly why he couldn’t seem to open his eyes. Tried to sit and had to bite back a scream.

Somewhere a thousand miles from anywhere a man’s voice inquired, “Why aren’t you paying attention?” and how strange, he could have imagined the creature had sounded offended…

He hurt. Moving hurt, sending pain lancing from between his legs, lying still hurt. To exist at all was to ache.

Ken was lying on his back on a cold, hard surface (one of his hands was hanging over the edge, dangling dizzily over nothing at all; he was still on the altar, then) with nothing more than darkness and pain and sudden, choking panic to hold onto – had to get up, _had to run_ and how, when he could barely move without wanting to scream? He was naked, he remembered, and, wracked with uncontrollable shivering, he could feel blood running down his flanks and pooling between his thighs. The cloth covering his eyes was damp, and there was something sticky on his brow. Mary Mother of God hadn’t the twisted bastard had enough of him yet?

Ken knew better than to hope that it might be over and he might be home and safe and whole. He already knew that to hope at all was futile. He’d had enough already; he just wanted this to be over and he didn’t much care how just as long as it ended. He might have imagined himself dreaming, but why would he ever have dreamt of this? I want to go home, he thought again, and it felt like a prayer.

He swallowed. His throat felt desperately dry. He asked again, almost childishly, “What do you want from me?”, and his voice sounded fragile and only entirely human. Why isn’t this over?  
The rustle of fabric, footsteps, the _click_ of fingernails on polished stone and Farfarello was at the head of the altar and leaning over him, one hand resting either side of his head. Ken tilted his head back, searching for the man’s face; he fancied he could feel Farfarello’s breath against his bruised cheeks and, when the madman finally broke his silence, that he could hear the smile in his voice. “The eyes of the blind shall be opened,” Farfarello said pedagogically, responding not to Ken's words but to the question he had caught behind them. “Have patience, kitten. You’ll see soon enough.”

Then nothing. The oppressive weight of Farfarello’s presence lessened as the man stepped back. For a single desperate moment Ken allowed himself to hope it was over, that the Schwarz had grown bored and might be leaving, then there were hands on his body, pawing at his arms and chest and snatching jealously for his waist, and he felt his heart skip a beat and he cried out in sudden terror, cringing away from the hands and trying vainly to lash out. Farfarello hissed in irritation and dragged the boy bodily off the altar and then to his feet though Ken staggered and collapsed heavily against him, clutching desperately at his forearms as he strove to keep his balance. The man’s clothing felt rough and strange against his bare, bruised flesh, it was a forcible reminder of his own nakedness and he felt himself blushing miserably.

“You’ll pay for this,” Ken said softly and hopelessly, gazing blindly up at Farfarello. His voice shook and almost broke; he realized he was furious. I’ll kill you for this, you bastard. I'm going to—  
He had meant that Weiss would avenge its own: only that. He had no idea what Farfarello thought he had been suggesting. Ken heard the man laughing contemptuously, felt him shift slightly – perhaps, shaking his head. “Hmph. You’re a gull, child of God. A gull like all the others.”

And though he couldn’t understand, Ken understood only too clearly. Farfarello had sounded bitterly disappointed and his words made Ken flinch (good Christ, what have I done?) but he said no more. He simply turned and walked purposefully from the altar, half-carrying, half-dragging his captive after him and Ken fought against him, but his struggles were weak and wholly ineffectual. They seemed merely a token, lacking not only in strength but also in fervor. A bad pastiche of his earlier boldness.

Fatal. Ken had stopped believing he could save himself.

Ken stumbled when Farfarello stopped short, falling forward and he must have been expecting it, for he caught him. Caught him, steadied him, hands lingering on his upper arms, the tips of Farfarello’s fingers barely brushing against the skin: a gesture that was, paradoxically, almost tender. Ken shuddered.

He just wished he knew what was happening to him, and why it went on happening.

Farfarello’s arms tightened about him – lifting, carrying. He didn’t struggle this time; just let it happen. It wasn’t like there was anything else he could do. The surface he was placed on, this time, felt flimsy and flatly temporary when Ken tested it with his hands; it gave slightly under his weight, shuddered and creaked as Farfarello climbed up after him. A table of some sort, he guessed, the cheap lightweight collapsible kind the nuns had piled handicrafts and homemade cakes and other people’s worthless crap on at fêtes and fundraisers, and had spent most of the rest of the time piled up at the back of the church hall. He couldn’t imagine what a refectory table had to do with anything.

“What _is_ this?” Ken head himself ask, his voice flatly incredulous: now he knew this simply couldn’t be real, how could it be? It was a nightmare, a crazy, lucid nightmare that had long outstayed its welcome, he must have hit his head on the mission though he couldn’t remember doing it. He might even have started to laugh. He wondered when he’d get to wake up.

(Ken liked mornings. He had first shift, with the new guy worse luck, but by the time he’d got downstairs and made a start on breakfast – he wasn’t a great cook but he enjoyed it, the mere _process_ of cooking was, it was… that – the dream would have ceased to matter, and he would lose himself in routine and sunlight and the heavy scent of pollen and he’d just. Forget.)

Probably nearly morning, he thought dazedly – did that make a difference? Funny, how time moved in dreams.

Funny, when truth is terrible to the touch, how eager we become to believe in lies.

No reply. He hadn’t been expecting one. Just the thin scrape of metal under strain as Farfarello crouched before him, gently taking one of his hands as if leading him into a dance, and guiding him to his feet. Weary, subdued by pain and crippling uncertainty, too disoriented to think of fighting and too caught up in this curious situation to remember caution (what the _Hell_ is going _on_ here? why hasn’t he just slit my throat or something?), Ken let himself be led. He no longer cared what he might be being spared for. He didn’t give a shit what happened next just as long as it happened quickly. The table listed beneath his feet as he stepped forward.

Felt Farfarello’s hand on his shoulder, coaxing him into an awkward turn, Godalmighty it _was_ like a dance, felt something cool and hard and rough-edged scrape lightly against one of his arms, his back – one of the walls? No, whatever it was hadn’t been cold enough for stonework. Curious, he reached out behind him as Farfarello backed him against it, that strange, unyielding something, fingers brushing against the rough surface. Wood. A post of some sort.

(I don’t understand. What’s this crazy bastard—) “What are you…?”

Fingers tightening about his own, yanking his arm back and slamming it hard against the surface he was backed against. He cried out, more in surprise than pain, tried instinctively to tug his arm free: funny thing, Ken realized, Farfarello wasn’t gripping his arm, he was pinning it with what felt like the edge of his palm, and there was something scratching at the skin of his wrist, pressing just hard enough to hurt and Ken cursed Farfarello for an insane goddamn fucking rapist and tried to lunge forward. Yelped again as Farfarello slammed into him, pressing his own body hard against Ken's and holding him pinned against the post oh Christ, oh Jesus fuck _what did he_ —

And agony blazed hot and searing behind Ken’s eyes and he heard himself howl. Fuck. _Fuck_. What the _Hell_ did he just—! He screamed until his breath ran out, felt himself slump forward against Farfarello, his head resting on Farfarello’s shoulder. He clawed at the man’s face with his free hand ( _the eye_ ) and tugged at his trapped wrist, gasping as a bolt of pain tore white-hot down his outstretched arm.

The bastard had driven a nail through his wrist.

Farfarello just laughed, carefree as a child and he was still playing, Ken realized, he had been playing all along, and he forced Ken's other hand back against the beam behind him. Mother of God he can’t, he can’t _possibly_ – he tensed, and tried to kick but the weight of Farfarello’s body pressing against his own held him trapped – I’m going to kill him, I’m going to die, _he can’t do this_ …

Even knowing what was coming didn’t help. It took longer this time; he was too tense, he was fighting it and what good would that do? It happened all the same and it hurt. When Farfarello stepped back, he left Ken breathless and limp with agony and trembling, slumping forward and wanting only to collapse, to curl up around the pain and wait for an ending. His legs had given way; if it hadn’t been for the nails buried in the flesh of his wrists, he would have fallen. It hurt.

Farfarello knelt before him, and placed one pale, too-cold hand on his right foot. _Oh God, oh God please no_ … Ken heard himself, like a frightened child, start to weep.

(Oh God, I’m being—he’s trying to—)

A hand on his ankles, holding them in place. The pain was only predictable but Ken screamed all the same. He wished he were dead. This was defeat. This was humiliation and insanity and despair.

(he’s crucified me.)

Ken couldn’t breathe. Pain in his shoulders, in his outstretched arms, in his feet, pain like burning, like something would tear in two; his head slumped forward, the hanging ends of the blindfold brushed lightly against his bare chest the mad bastard’s fucking crucified me! and how quickly did this kill, _how did it kill_ and he couldn’t breathe and he was going to die and why, why couldn’t he breathe? He was gasping for air like the day he first played ninety minutes, or the first time he’d run into a coach who saw enough of talent to be bored by it. He hadn’t minded it then. _He couldn’t breathe_ —

There was a thump as Farfarello sprang back to the floor, the scrape of metal as he cleared up, taking away the table. There were hands on his body, on his waist, reaching between his legs to rub against him. All Ken could do (couldn’t even curse him, couldn’t seem to find his voice) was whimper and shake his head and try to cringe away as Farfarello worked him but it hardly seemed to matter when nothing worked; he hardly felt those mocking caresses. Nothing could chase away the pain and the fear and the exhaustion, or how entirely hopeless he felt (didn’t want to die: wished he were dead). There was the sting of a blade tracing delicate and deliberate across his chest, leaving deep bleeding gashes running blood, blood trailing like lacework down his chest. There were words, spoken over his transfixed body.

And a prayer in his mind and footsteps, retreating, and the heavy, final slam of a door.

Ken screamed himself hoarse.  
____

It was well past midnight by the time they found him, naked and blindfolded with a length of heavy white cloth, his skin a patchwork of bruising, body streaked with gaudy ribbons of blood.

Omi had known it was a game. Not right from the start, from the moment he and Youji realized that Ken wasn’t coming home, not even when Ken was just _gone_ , vanished somewhere between the target site and the shop basement. It had been, at that point, a routine disappearance – if routine it was, if that was really what he was supposed to call it when his oldest friend simply didn’t come home. But there had been a protocol to follow and Omi had lost himself in it, dashing off a preliminary report while Youji paced and chain-smoked and cursed time for passing and Ken for his absence, and Aya too.

(Aya. Still too raw, too used to working alone: fundamentally all wrong for them, and entirely unreliable. It simply hadn’t occurred to Aya that he should wait until the whole team were accounted for before standing down – why should it have?)

He hadn’t known it then but from the moment they found Ken's abandoned bike, and he realized with a sudden horrible thrill that they were following a trail, Omi had known this was a game. Weiss were being toyed with and artless, uncomplicated Ken was little more than a pawn, something that had been taken only to ensure they would play at all: his friend had been abducted not because he mattered, but because he didn’t matter enough…

Whoever had taken Ken had wanted him found, and had wanted them to find him.

What could Weiss do but join the dance, never mind who was leading?

Guiding them here and nowhere that either of them would have thought to look for a missing friend, had they not been led there by the hand: a church, silent, sanctified, sinister. Candles in tight-knit little clusters, scattering the shadows, flames flickering feebly in the draught from the open doors and white flowers, weeping petals, strewn about the blood-spattered altar. A gaily-painted wooden sign all gleaming gilt lettering and pristine white paint and a murdered jacket trapped against it, a knife handle protruding from between its leather shoulders. Ken; a pornographic parody of the Passion.

He had been crucified, three square-headed nails biting into the bloodied flesh of wrists and feet. His captors had pinned him down, exposed him like an anatomy subject primed for dissection, and carelessly abandoned him. A pawn, a toy; left to die, to live, to the eyes of whoever might come across him first, an added bonus if they knew him…

They, Omi realized, had been meant to see this, and he felt his gorge rise.

Youji was talking, his voice thin and fragile and heavy with horror. “Oh, Jesus,” he was saying to the silence: impossible to tell if it were a curse or a plea. “Jesus _Christ_ , Omi… how are we going to get him _down_?”

Omi turned to him, slow and deliberate, his eyes wide. How in the world were they going to get Ken out of here?

He moved before Omi could stop him. Youji could move so fast. He darted to the foot of the cross (hefty, simple, unfinished, its surfaces rough-hewn), fingers groping for the nail that transfixed Ken's feet. Slick with blood, buried deep in Ken's flesh, he couldn’t even grasp it without his fingers slipping from the head. Ken shifted, just slightly. He thought. Youji froze.

Ken was trying to move. He dragged himself upward by his arms, threw his head back, panting for breath. A bead of thick, sticky blood crawled slow and sure down his bare feet and dripped from his toes to the flags beneath him; he whimpered, a low, hopeless sound deep in the back of the throat. A quiet betrayal of pain. Muscles tensed, Ken held himself still, breath coming in ragged, frantic gasps. Youji paled, stumbling backward, gazing down at his bloodied fingers. His back bumped against the rail of the sanctuary and he staggered, clutching at the railing for support.

When he turned back to Omi the look in his eyes, the helplessness and the horror that had become trapped there, chilled the teenager’s blood. Youji – cool, casual Youji, a study in scrupulous nonchalance – was at a loss and knew it and didn’t know what to do. The man looked ill. He looked like he wanted to vomit. What are we going to do, Omi? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it…

“That’s not going to work,” Omi heard himself saying in a very small voice. “We’re going to need…” He choked on his words, clapping one hand over his mouth and, just briefly, closing his eyes. He had no idea what he thought he was stifling. Panic, perhaps. “Tools, Youji-kun. We’re going to need tools.”  
“Tools?” Youji echoed. His eyes were as uncomprehending as his voice. “What do you mean?”  
“To get him down. We’re—” He swallowed hard, trying to force himself to relax and no, Omi, he thought clearly as if someone else were speaking to him, you can do better than this, you’ve got to. Pull yourself together, breathe, count to ten – whatever it takes. The grief and panic he felt for Ken wouldn’t help to save him. Had to think, and do so logically. Had to stay calm: _two, three, four_ — “Pliers,” he said simply.

(And saw Youji _wince_.)

Omi ignored him: this isn’t helping, Balinese. _Six_. Stay calm, stay logical. Think. _Seven. Eight_. We don’t have what we need. He let his hands, which had been worrying at the neckline of his jacket, fall to his sides. He straightened, his face carefully expressionless, even mask-like – an exaggerated pastiche of serenity. Met Youji’s eyes. “I’m going to go home,” he said, and his voice was only perfectly calm.

 _Ten_. He hadn’t even realized he was going to speak until the words were out. Hadn’t realized what his decision was going to be until he’d already made it, until he’d committed himself: there was a certain power about a decision announced aloud. An irrevocability. What, Omi thought, choice was there?

For a moment there was only silence. Youji – could he, did he really say he was going to go home? – simply stared at the teenager, lips slightly parted, eyes filled with dismay and terrible confusion. I can’t believe you’d say that, Omi…

Behind him Ken, his body sheened with sweat and his features tight with pain, trembling from the effort of holding himself upright, let his head fall forward. A hank of dark, damp hair clung to the plane of his cheek. He gave, involuntarily, a small stifled sound – choked-off, dying in the throat – and then another… oh dear God, Youji realized, dread creeping cold and clammy back over him, he’s crying—

“You have got to be kidding,” he said hollowly. Go _home_?  
“I wouldn’t joke in a situation like this, Balinese,” Omi replied quietly. Hard now, Bombay, hard and chill and implacable as midwinter, and Persia’s through and through. It wasn’t often Omi felt the need to exert authority but when he did so he did so wholeheartedly, until every inch of him embodied it and it suffused everything he said and did: leadership personified. “I’m going home.”

Youji said nothing – the young man was staring, staring at Omi as if he’d never seen him before (a slender, even petite boy, fair, fine-featured—cute—yet serene, and in his serenity grown somehow monstrous), or was only now seeing him for what he was. Horror there. Disgust. Omi met his eyes, held them until Youji, abashed, ashamed of his own thoughts, glanced away. Think what you will, Youji, but you’re not thinking at all.

“Siberian’s chances,” Omi said into the silence, “are zero without help, _real_ help. We’re not going to be able to give him that through improvisation. I think he’s been injured quite badly enough already. If we’re to get him down from there without doing any more damage, we need to do this properly. Unless, of course, you were planning on tearing him down?”  
And what hurt the most was the teenager was only telling the truth. Stating, even, the obvious. Ken could have said it. Youji shivered. “So that’s it? We’re just going to go? We’re going to leave Ken here alone?”  
“No. I’m going. Give me your car keys.”

He hadn’t been expecting Youji to comply so easily: God knew he’d given the man little enough reason to. Omi granted Youji a quick, murmured _thanks_ when the young man wordlessly tossed his keys over to him and to hell with common courtesy and that, he supposed as he closed his gloved fingers about them, was only predictable too. Ken had been teasing Youji, this morning – yesterday now. Another playful provocation, something about a pretty college girl who’d made him wait. Not for long. There always were those girls… they’d laughed about it, and forgotten.

Youji was angry with him. Omi couldn’t blame him for it.

He turned to the door. Said over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought, “Stay with him.”  
Youji started after him. “Wait!” Vaulted over the altar rail, hit the ground running. He caught up with Omi halfway down the aisle, seizing him by the shoulder. His grasp was rough, painful. Rough enough to bruise. “Wait. Wait. What am I supposed to do? Ken’s _dying_ , Omi!”  
“Do nothing,” Omi said, and his voice was firm and brisk and businesslike yet too much so, “unless Siberian loses consciousness. If he does, call an ambulance and get the Hell out. Do you understand?”  
“You _can’t_ be suggesting we—!”  
“ _Do you understand_ , Balinese?” Omi took no pleasure in the way that Youji hesitated, then nodded. His friend’s eyes, however, told a different story: they were only painfully uncertain, wide and young and fearful and (letting Bombay slip away) Omi relented, giving him a small, bright smile. Just the sight of it, that smile, was enough to tell Youji how desolate he must have looked. “He’s not going to die, Youji-kun. I promise we’ll get him home. I’ll be as quick as I can. Please… stay with Ken-kun. Talk to him. Youji-kun, I’ve _got_ to _go_.”

He’s not going to die—easy for Omi to say.

Easy for him to say that, when he wasn’t the one who could only wait. Omi wasn’t the one who could do nothing more useful than talk, and talk, and try futilely to comfort Ken, and realize how pathetic he sounded (all those stupid, empty phrases – _it’ll be okay, you’re doing great, just a little longer, Ken, don’t give up_ – and who did he think he was kidding?) and that Ken, lost in his own pain, wasn’t hearing him anyway. It was Youji, not him, who had to listen to Ken fighting desperately to draw breath and weeping because he hurt.

Easy for Omi to say Ken wasn’t going to die, when Omi didn’t have to watch him dying.

And far from home, or far enough. Miles to go before I sleep.

Youji had walked back slowly, head down, and found that he couldn’t move. Couldn’t bring himself to step away from the sanctuary: it was enough of a betrayal that he couldn’t make himself look. Leaned on the altar rail, a poor pastiche of cool objectivity. Lit a cigarette, perhaps to steady himself, perhaps only for the sake of having something to do with his hands, and the soft click of ignition seemed far too loud, to him. They shook, Youji realized as he raised his lighter, the flame shivering at the element. It should have unnerved him. Shouldn’t smoke in church – inhaled too hard and too fast, choked on it.

He felt young and incompetent and helpless, felt all the while as if he were going to scream, or start laughing hysterically. There’d been women, hadn’t there, stood at the foot of the cross? Stood where Youji would have expected soldiers in shining armor… women, calm as sentries, just watching. All upturned faces, folded hands, painted, pious passivity.

Stupid fucking religious artists and their stupid fucking ecstatic fantasies of what it was to witness a good man murdered by inches. How could anyone have simply watched?

(Ken would have struggled. Youji was sure he would have done that, for all the good it had done him. He could imagine that much, how Ken must have fought: couldn’t bring himself to imagine – and blood, and screams, a body bending over him and buttery light catching the blade of the knife – the rest. Blood on the denuded altar, pools of it, shining wet and malign in the dim light. Blood tracked across the floor. He would have been bleeding freely by then, too badly hurt to fight them off…)

Youji couldn’t look and it felt to him like shame, a renunciation. His face shadowed by a curtain of hair, half-hiding behind it, he cast the still-glowing butt of his cigarette to the floor, immediately lit another and thank God he can’t see and doesn’t know I’m here. He’s got it bad enough already without knowing I’m doing nothing and Bombay where are you?

(He would have been frightened. He must have been so afraid.)

Glimpsed from the corner of the eye: Ken, head bowed as if in prayer. He had capitulated to exhaustion, let himself slump forward and now, too weary to hold himself upright, hung by the arms. Worn down by pain, strength bleeding from him, Ken was plainly exhausted but the body _in extremis_ is a damnably stubborn machine. Ken was losing hope, but his body wouldn’t let him go. It fought to keep the machine functioning, traded time in minutes and hours for suffering and ignominy when all he wanted was an—

Ken, Youji realized, was only waiting to die.

Time crawled. Youji swore, and smoked, and paced the length of the altar rail like a tiger paces behind the bars of its too-small cage. Someone, he promised Ken, was going to die for this and who and how and where the fuck was Omi, what was keeping him? Somewhere, softly, a clock struck the half-hour. It couldn’t be much longer now, surely it couldn’t and maybe he should call an ambulance anyway, to Hell with waiting, to Hell with what _they_ could do, Ken needed help and he needed it fast and did it matter who it came from just as long as it came?

Of course it did. Ken Hidaka was already dead. Might as well leave him to die as leave him to the authorities. Oh God, oh God, _where was Omi_? Maybe he should just kill Ken, put the poor little bastard out of his misery—

It wasn’t a real thought. Youji’s mind was running wild on him, demanding action. He had to do something. Do _anything_ , anything at all and what the Hell was there to do?

And there was only heavy, stifling silence, and blood trickling slowly down Ken's flanks and pooling on the floor drop by drop by drop, the click of the lighter and sudden flash of flame and, caught somewhere on the edge of Youji’s awareness, the distant chime of the clock as it measured out the dragging minutes – a taunt and a reproach, telling him only that he had waited too long already. God knew how long Ken had been waiting. Ken dragged himself back up again, painfully; the scream – a hoarse, weak thing – stuck in his throat. Tiring.

(He thinks he’s alone: it was no comfort at all, all of a sudden. Something hideously voyeuristic about this…)

And, in time, there was Omi.

Omi: arriving in a thump and a clatter of boxes and bags which he cast haphazard into the center of the aisle, letting them slip from his arms and leaving them where they fell. Raising his head, he met Youji’s eyes, giving him a shrug and a small, apologetic smile. Well, I had to go back anyway. We might as well make the most of it… Dropping to his knees amongst the clutter of bags and cases, he drew a battered metal box toward him and began fiddling with the catches.

“Can you find us something to stand on?” he said to the box he was bent over, only belatedly catching himself and glancing up at Youji in consternation. “How’s—”  
Youji sighed, and he sounded weary. He cast his half-smoked cigarette, the last of God only knew how many, to the floor, crushed it underfoot. “How’s Ken? Ken's still conscious, but he’s… in a bad way, Omi. I tried talking to him and – and I don’t think he heard. I don’t think he knows we’re here.” Still less who ‘we’ are.  
“Oh,” Omi said simply. Added, almost as an afterthought, “That’s probably for the best right now.” He sounded distracted, all his attention on the box in front of him with its recalcitrant clasps. A tool box, Youji realized after a second or two, then he realized it belonged to Ken. He’d put a sticker on the lid not so long ago, something he’d got from a Pocky box and could think of nothing better to do with… “I think I saw a table in the porch. Can you go and fetch it?”

There was drying blood spattered across the Formica tabletop, a nauseating contrast with the cheerful, rubbishy, sunshine-yellow surface. Unconsciously, Youji shivered, bending to wipe it clean with his sleeve.

“You’ll have to hold him,” Omi said, the pliers held loosely in his right hand. “I’ll get him down.”

 

Ken.

Hand on his forehead, gently oppressive. Holding his head up when he would have let himself slump, fingers brushing against his brow and smoothing his damp, tangled hair; he couldn’t really feel it (Couldn’t move; couldn’t get away). And a voice, felt more than heard, the murmuring of comfortable nonsense. Like a nurse, someone paid to care. Thought he caught his name (his name this time; that was a new one) but couldn’t be sure. Couldn’t make out the words.

Just – someone there, talking, and a body braced against his own, all warmth and taut muscles and heavy fabric brushing against his bare legs, cologne and cigarettes, warm leather (Familiar somehow, comfortable). A hand on his waist, steadying. He thought.

Could be wishful thinking, third sign of madness, hallucination – couldn’t (hope) be sure. He couldn’t think clearly enough to be sure of anything much (Couldn’t see). The only thing he had to hold on to was that he was in pain, and too much of it. Agony, blazing white-hot, suffused his body: every limb, every tissue, every cell; throat too dry, lungs burning. Cold. He thought. Couldn’t think past it, couldn’t imagine being free of it, couldn’t even work out why he was hurting any more. Pain dazed him, made him docile. Panic and fighting to draw breath and the cold, the darkness he was lost in and oh God, oh God I’m going to _die_ …

(Good. Get on with it and _Christ_ , I’m so fucking _thirsty_ right now!)

Hand in his hair. The play of – something – against his face, something soft and ticklish. Murmurs.

Something pressed against his foot. Cold, dull-edged something scraping against the skin. He flinched, tried to press himself back against the wood he had been pinned to (Oh, God, oh shit I can’t take any more I just _can’t_ who is this person why can’t I…) heard, or thought he did, someone whimper soft and low and hopeless, and tried to turn his head toward a man he doubted even existed.

Easy. Easy, Kenken.

Didn’t take it away, the thing at his feet (Mary Mother of God, help me). Pressed it all the closer. Metal against skin, chilling it. Pinching it. Sudden stab of agony, a vibration through the spike that transfixed his feet and, just maybe, the man beside him was real and this was actually happening… A wrench. A twist. White flared behind his eyes; tears queued up (Oh shit, oh shit, _Ave Maria gratia plena Dominus tecum_ —). The sudden warm rush of blood across his chilled skin. Gone.

Gone.

Felt his feet touch – not the ground. Something flimsy, which gave slightly beneath him.

The hand was gone from his brow, the heavy presence from his side and then there were arms about him, gathering him close, holding him upright, taking his weight. Someone supporting his body against theirs. Could still feel the – whatever this was – beneath his feet and couldn’t quite breathe right, held up like this, not with his arms still pinned. Who was this? Not him, he was sure of that now. Not that man but definitely a man, tall, and… Oh, God, he felt so warm, he smelled so right. I know you, he thought. Don’t I?

The voice again, low, murmuring. Comfortable and comforting – familiar. Words only half-heard and understood not at all and then his name again: not _kitten_ , not _child of God_ , his name. He wanted to weep.

Creaking, metal rubbing against metal. The surface he, they stood on shifted slightly. Pressure at the wrist now, his right wrist, and something catching his skin again. Conversation. A name he thought he knew (Don’t hope, for Christ’s sake don’t hope…). That same sensation of the nail that transfixed him _shifting_ , and sudden pain as it was tugged out. His arm, heavy and foreign-feeling, fell to his side, something hot and heavy running over his palm and between his fingers. It hardly seemed to matter. Felt the burning in his chest subside. Someone had stuffed a cotton swab in his head—

And then the last nail was out and his other hand, blood-slick and numb, was freed and he was being lifted and oh God, he thought, what happens now? Is this salvation? Deliver us from evil and forgive us our trespasses, tell me I’m safe, tell me this is over because I can’t take any more. I want to go home.

(Who _are_ you?)

Breathed.

Set him down gently but too much so, like he was cracking; like he’d fractured and one jolt would see him shatter completely. Someone had spread a blanket across the floor, he could feel the fabric, heavy and a little rough, brushing against the backs of his outstretched legs. He’d been expecting – didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Footsteps, squeak of training shoes on a too-smooth surface. Two of them, then and the other was holding him, still, just a little too tight; arms around. He tried to protest and couldn’t seem to find his voice and didn’t really care when this man was so warm, and he was so cold. Just breathed, lips parted and head tilted slightly back. Slow, deep breaths. Deliberate.

The fog in his head was clearing. The pain had drawn back, just a little. God, he still felt so thirsty, so tired, so cold. He tried to raise one hand to his blindfold and it hurt, hurt to move, hurt to be: smeared, with numbed and clumsy fingers, a trail of blood across one cheek. Blood daubed the fabric at his eyes. Couldn’t see. Important that he saw and couldn’t get a grip on the fabric. Couldn’t make his fingers do what he wanted.

Someone caught at his hand, gently but firmly placed it back by his side. “No, don’t try to move.”  
Don’t move. Even that, even to lift his hand, that was—and a familiar voice: not the man from before, the one who’d smelled so right and called him by name and told him… Boy’s voice. Quiet boy. Sensible boy. Oh God. Oh God, I _know_ you. Don’t look at me, not like this. He said, “I can’t see—”

The boy was working already. Sensible boy, with slim, dexterous fingers, tugging at the knot which was stiff and far too tight and would be hurting those delicate, clever hands. As the fabric worked loose, he raised one hand again (no. No, don’t stop me) and tugged. Couldn’t wait for the boy to finish loosening the binds. Pulled, feeling the blindfold fall away and slip down to hang loosely about his neck.

And light, and familiar faces.

Ken started to cry.

Wrapped his arms about Youji’s neck – it hurt, Christ it must have hurt him – buried his face in the crook of his teammate’s neck, and wept in sheer relief. It’s over. Oh, Jesus, _it’s over_ …

It took a moment for them to realize that Ken was trying to say something. His voice low and husky, his throat abraded and mouth desperately dry, Ken was speaking so quietly that Youji had to strain to hear; it was only the warm, ticklish sensation of breath playing against his neck, too forceful for anything but speech, that had told him Ken was talking in the first place. Omi would have been none the wiser had it not been for the shock that crept into Youji’s eyes.

“Thank God,” Ken was murmuring, fervent as prayer. “Thank God.”  
____

One day – everything that begun had, Omi knew, to come to an end sometime – the city would stop. But not today.

Not today. As he stepped into the pre-dawn chill Tokyo (the city wreathed in a light ground mist transmuting it into a place of smoke and shade, abruptly and inaptly ethereal) had started once again to stir, rousing itself in preparation for another round. Though the horizon was brushed with only the vaguest suggestion of dawn already, in bedroom and bathroom windows, lights flickered; on a street not far distant, a cold car engine sputtered into reluctant life. Darkness lingered, stubbornly, aware it was outstaying its welcome; the sullen moon sulked behind a skein of clouds. Omi shivered. Why did this have to feel like failure? Ken was alive, he was safe: they could have expected nothing more. So then why—

He’d tried to walk out. Ken had. Youji, an arm braced about his shoulders, had helped him sit and drink cool water from a plastic bottle: easy, Kenken, you’ll make yourself sick… Ken had tried to push him away, to rise. His body felt foreign, numb, unresponsive; his feet were bandaged. A heavy blanket wrapped about him and beneath that, Youji’s coat. He still shivered. He had still tried to stand.

Had fallen, of course. Agony entrapped him before he’d managed to get to his knees; weight on the foot, Christ, that had been a bad idea, the worst… He had cried out in sudden pain, or perhaps it was only in panic, or both of those, or neither. Fell forward. By the look in Ken’s exhausted eyes, how he had slumped in relief when Youji caught and held him, breaking his fall, by the way he rested his head against Youji’s chest, even he hadn’t been expecting it to work. Ken had only looked thankful. Pride, Omi guessed, had been what made him try. Pride or persistence. Where was the difference?

“You idiot,” Youji had said hopelessly – didn’t even know who he was talking to; why hadn’t he seen that coming? – and lifted Ken into his arms. Ken hadn’t replied. He let his eyes fall closed, just breathing. Youji didn’t like to imagine what he might have been thinking.

(Nothing at all. Just how cold he was, and how badly he wanted to sleep. Too tired to care.)

Ken said, “Take me home.”

(At least he wasn’t dead; the rest he could worry about later.)

At the car – and it was the wrong car and the new guy was gonna be so pissed with him and it was just a thought, it meant nothing at all – Omi handed Ken something, placing it in his arms: a garment, dark and slick with moisture beneath his fingers, heavy with dew. His jacket, he realized after a moment of intense confusion. He’d presumed it lost, or destroyed: at any rate gone. Why it should relieve him to have it back he didn’t know, but he was comforted all the same. Ken dropped his head, resting his cheek against the damp brown leather. It smelled of his room.

Omi drove. Ken, curled up on the back seat beneath a tangle of coats and blankets, his head resting in Youji’s lap – knew it should have embarrassed him but he was weary and agonized and pride was an optional extra, a luxury he could ill afford: should have cared but couldn’t – drifted into a daze and from there into a shallow, fitful sleep.

And voices. Omi and Youji, talking. Not much. Ken woke to the idling engine, the car stuck in traffic or waiting at a red light. It seemed goddamn ridiculous at this time and what the Hell time was it, anyway? He didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t move. He doubted they’d even realized he was awake. They were talking, Youji’s voice low, murmurous and once again felt more than heard. They discussed him like he was a child, like he wasn’t there: they were discussing hospitals. Youji’s suggestion. Omi vetoed it. There was an explanation, but Ken hardly cared. The no, coming from Omi, was quite enough to satisfy him and he didn’t care about the rest. He just wanted to go home. Wanted to sleep. He was cold, so goddamn cold…

Too cold. Shivering and aching and exhausted and why won’t this end, God? Ken couldn’t believe he had slept at all, but he must have done—

He hurt. Youji knew it from the way Ken whimpered when he picked him up and attempted, though he was too exhausted to so much as open his eyes, to pull away, to curl in on himself as if all he wanted now was solitude. Animals did that, pulled away from the hands that tried only to help them because they couldn’t understand why. The intrusion: that they understood, and that was all that mattered. They could appreciate nothing but the now of the pain. It must have hurt Ken to be touched.

It must have hurt to keep conscious.

He had managed, how Youji had no idea, to get the blanket caught around him. And bleeding, still; the stains on the blanket and the lining of his coat betrayed that much and Aya or whatever the fuck girl’s name the guy wanted them to call him would be fucking furious, but it was stupid for an assassin to have such a pretty little car in the first place. Blood on the seats, the floor. A slow bleed but a persistent one, it wasn’t even a surprise but he still felt his insides give a lurch. Youji thanked the Gods he couldn’t bring himself to believe in that the sun was not quite risen, the street still quiet – the last thing they needed was an audience.

“I can walk,” Ken said. A weak, almost involuntary protest, coming far too late.  
“No,” Youji replied tightly. “No, Ken. You can’t.”

(Ken was deceptive. Youji thought the same thing every time circumstance forced him to take Ken in his arms and he was a lean little thing, really; he looked like he should be nothing at all, yet his weight was oppressive. Better get used to it, Kudou. This boy won’t walk for a while.)

And a light on in the store and a figure visible through the open doorway, back to the corridor and stiff disapproval showing in the set to his shoulders: Aya, opening up and no doubt cursing the rest of them for their absence (Ken, for failing to arrive on time, then failing to answer his door). No doubt telling himself Ken had simply overslept, Youji had taken his car to impress a date. No doubt forgetting that Ken went running in the mornings and the only things that would stop him getting back in time to open up were invariably sinister, that Youji had no reason to want his car. Probably almost as pissed about his _car_ being gone as he was about Ken's failure to show himself.

“ _Balinese_ ,” Omi said, and it sounded like a warning.

He had started toward the store without even realizing it. Had been – Youji had no agenda. He hardly knew what he had wanted to do but he’d wanted Aya to see. He wanted him to understand that they existed, wanted to bust that goddamn self-absorbed, self-righteous little bubble that arrogant prick swanned around in, as if his precious fucking sister and his precious fucking revenge and his own precious fucking pain were the only things that mattered and nothing else were real to him. As if they were only a team when it was convenient.

Wanted more than anything to thrust Ken into Aya’s arms and say, look at him. He’s real, just as real as Sleeping Beauty back there, he can suffer too. They raped him, Aya. They raped Ken and as if that wasn’t enough they fucking _crucified_ him. Look me in the eye and tell me he’s expendable.

But being seen like this by the new guy would have been the last thing Ken wanted.

“I’ll talk to Abyssinian,” Omi was saying in a tone that brooked no compromise: Bombay had slipped his leash again. “Go help Ken-kun.”  
“You’ll call a doctor first, won’t you?” Youji said: he hadn’t intended to sound like he was pleading.  
A nod. A small smile. “Don’t worry, Youji-kun. Go put Ken-kun to bed, he needs it. I’ll handle the rest.”

Youji knew he’d been dismissed. As if for emphasis, Omi gave him a gentle push as if to get him moving and turned away, ducking into the store. Half-turning, Youji stopped by the stairway, just for a minute, gazing back toward the shop. Watched the teenager for just long enough to see him pick up the phone and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Omi, but it was – he had to know. He just _had_ to, no reason why…

“Okay, kiddo,” Youji said. “Let’s get this over with.”  
____

Bathroom. Small, even spartan; uncluttered shelves, a dripping tap – Youji knew that he had his little vanities but Jesus, Ken barely seemed to bother with _anything_. Soap, unbranded shampoo chosen only for its price and toothpaste for the way it tasted. Antiseptic. A first-aid kit tucked beneath the sink and a towel, no doubt from yesterday’s shower, discarded near the doorway. He was eighteen and it showed.

Youji’s coat, a blanket, blood-stained bandages trailing across the floor.

Ken.

It was only now, lingering in the too-harsh light of the bathroom with nothing to do but wait for the bath to run, that Youji really saw him; he’d been too bewildered and anxious and guiltily grateful to see him alive to take much in before. Ken was alive and it was enough or it had been, but he wasn’t so sure he believed that any more.

Conscious, but little more. Naked, Ken lay on his back on the bathroom floor, his eyes closed and his head turned to one side. Already he was slipping into sleep.

Everything looked worse under neon: harsh, overexposed. Angry, purpling bruises stippled Ken's face and upper arms, his stomach, his thighs. Knife cuts on cheeks and chest and limbs, mostly shallow and already scabbed over, intended not to cripple or to kill, but only to make Ken hurt. And bite marks, and scratches – fingernails scraped against skin rough and forceful enough to make him bleed; even his lip was split. And the gaping, sluggishly bleeding wounds in wrists and feet, the skin about them torn where he had struggled and skinned by the heads of the nails. Blood. Blood _everywhere_. Dried across his body, seeping slowly from the deeper wounds…

And nothing that would ever have proved fatal. The only reason Ken had lived was because they, whoever had taken him, had never intended to kill him. It was no kind of comfort when to live at all had been to play into their hands.

“Shit, Kenken,” Youji heard himself murmur. Oh, you poor little bastard.

Didn’t think Ken heard him. He didn’t stir when Youji picked him up, though he gasped slightly when he was placed gently into the bath. The water was too warm and it stung, it made him painfully aware of how badly he was aching. Dragging open his eyes, he raised his head slightly and cast about the room for—there.

“Youji,” Ken said in drowsy indignation, “I can take a damn _bath_ alone.”  
Youji hesitated, drawing back slightly and looking at him dubiously. “I’m sure,” he said finally, “but I’d rather you didn’t right now.”  
“Why not?”

(You know why, Ken.)

He was being difficult and he knew it and he hardly knew why: he wasn’t at all in the mood to try and prove Youji wrong. Too much exhaustion, too much pain… Ken protested only because – because to protest was safe, it was normal. He wasn’t even surprised when Youji ignored him. His teammate simply nodded abstractedly and helped him to sit forward (his back rubbed raw and another knife cut, deeper than the others, running from his nape and down, down the length of his spine, stopping just above his sacrum; he flinched slightly at the touch of Youji’s hands, catching his breath). The soap smelled unpleasantly strong and Ken's sponge looked like a health hazard but what else was there?

It was surprising that Ken said no more. Worrying. He simply leant back against Youji’s arm as the young man, his touch deft and gentle, washed the dried blood from his body and limbs with soap and sponge. The water – he’d grown used to it – felt like a caress, the heat now only comforting. He tried to ignore the hands on his body and the slight stirring of pain, hung on to the dreamy, cotton-wool clouded feeling in his head for what little comfort it offered. He already knew it was simplest not to think too hard.

“Ken,” Youji said, “I need you to tilt your head back.”

Acquiescence seemed easiest. Youji held the shower head now, wetted and washed his sweaty, blood-streaked hair. His blood, heavy and red, spiraled lazily in the water about him. Ken closed his eyes just for a second—

Woke wrapped in a blanket, hands and feet bandaged, with Youji’s arms about him. The young man was carrying him like he would a sleeping child, cradled close to his chest. Placed him gently down on his own bed, murmuring the same old comfortable nonsense about doctors and rest and it’s okay, Kenken: a crazy kind of lullaby. His hair was wet. Couldn’t stop shivering. Youji.

Youji had one arm draped heavy about his shoulders, wouldn’t let go, guy didn’t know when to quit and _doctors_ – oh, who cared. For fuck’s sake, Kudou, just shut up. Shut up and let me sleep. Youji handed him something, three pills, a glass of water and Ken, arms aching, fingers numbed and clumsy, nearly dropped them: had to help him take them, hold the glass to his lips. He watched as Ken swallowed (couldn’t focus, couldn’t keep his eyes open, but. What’s that look for, Youji, what’s wrong?). Watched, and smiled, and said something Ken didn’t quite catch as he helped him lie back against a clutter of pillows, too many of them, drawing the sheets over him. _Now_ Youji tried not to touch. Fuck, this was ridiculous. It was difficult not to laugh.

(Hadn’t, Youji noted, even asked about the drugs, still less tried to turn them down. Oh, God, he really _is_ sick—)

Drawing Ken’s chair over to the bedside, he simply sat; fingers laced together, forearms resting on his thighs

And Ken looked – he looked changed, wrong. His arms swathed in bandages, a line of paper stitches taped across one cut cheek, the boy looked to Youji only horribly lost, pale against the pillows and too small for his own bed. He had (stupid of him really, but he’d thought that somehow Ken might appreciate it) dressed Ken in the slightly overlarge pajamas he liked to wear: it only made him appear all the younger. Damn the attitude, Ken was a child. What the Hell was he doing here?

Youji sighed, gazing down at his hands. He wanted a cigarette, or another one: didn't even know if he had any left and shouldn't be smoking in Ken's bedroom anyway, but. Wanted something to do with those useless hands of his. He'd been smoking more than usual, far too much. Blame the situation, the nervous habit he didn’t like to admit he had because Youji Kudou wasn’t – Christ, if only it wasn't all so damned uncertain! If he could just do something, have done something. If only he could help. Have helped. Either, or both… And nothing to do but wait.

He – and even to think it seemed stupid and hopeless, hopelessly presumptuous – he just wanted Ken to be okay.

(And, caught somewhere at the back of the mind, the flicker of candle-flame, and air hung heavy with incense, and shallow, labored breathing. The distant chime of a clock and Ken, nailed naked to a cross.)

They raped him and they crucified him and you want him to be _okay_. Good grief.

Took Ken’s hand as if it were something breakable. His fingers were cold.

Ken simply let him and wished he couldn’t resent it. The gentleness, the careful handling he could do nothing but accept – and, with it, the tacit acceptance that he was damaged and hurting and something was wrong with him, something was very, very wrong. Wished it didn’t make him feel diminished, somehow. Ken hated what it implied. Hated to realize his teammates saw him as vulnerable: a victim and he couldn’t even argue with it, God damn it…

Ken realized, quite suddenly and with a strange equanimity, that he wanted to weep: he had no idea why. Too tired even for tears, he gazed up at his ceiling, eyes unfocused and half-lidded, and thought, I’m home.

What happens now?

 _-ende-_


End file.
